Translating older photography books to digital

[guitar guy]

So I was in the bookstore tonight hoping to pick up a copy of "Understanding Exposure", because I just don't understand it yet, but they didn't have one in stock.

So I started perusing the books and I found a very attractive book called "John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide", and since nature photography interests me I snapped it up. It wasn't until I got it home that I discovered it was printed in 2000 and doesn't cover digital cameras at all (I recently bought a Nikon D3000).

So I'm just wondering, and this is what I'm assuming so please correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't everything pretty much hold true to the same with digital, such as aperture and shutter speed, but when he talks about different film speeds I can just translate to ISO?

 

[OrionsByte]

Yes, exposure is exposure whether you're working with film or digital. Aperture, shutter speeds, and sensitivity all work the same.

ISO is actually a measurement of film sensitivity. The ISO setting on your camera is actually setting your sensor to an ISO equivalence; in other words, you're telling your camera sensor to behave as if it has ISO200 or ISO800 film loaded in it.

So everything in the book should translate just fine, except I wouldn't recommend dipping your SD card in developer...

 

[ann]

And you won't find anything about white balance, but it may have info about color film and filters necessary to correct for temperature (in case you had the wrong type and couldn't change)

 

[guitar guy]

Thanks. I was thinking about returning it, but it seems like a good book for learning about composition and technique. I do have "Nikon D3000 for Dummies" to walk me through a lot of the technical stuff.

I actually have an even older book "The Basic Book of Photography" which was printed in 1997. I bought that 14 years ago when I thought I was going to learn how to work my father in-laws' Nikon FG. I think the whole film and developing factor was what kept me from continuing-- having to write down your settings and wait until the film got developed to see how you did. What a difference today!

This seems like a great forum. It's really cool how people can post their pics and get constructive criticism. I hope I can do that soon.

btw... I kind of jumped the gun and ordered a Sigma 10-22mm lens from BH. I probably should have actually learned how to shoot cool photos with my kit lens first, but I got excited seeing some really cool pics from the wide angle lenses. Then I was reading in Shaw's book last night about how "wide angle lenses are the most difficult to work with"!

oh boy

~Rick

 

[clanthar]

For metering and setting an exposure ISO film versus ISO digital will, as already noted, interchange. The differences otherwise have to do with ease of use and the quality of the image.

With film, ISO is a rating of sensitivity -- different films can be manufactured to require more or less light -- and it's fixed. Once you put a specific film in a camera the only way to change ISO is switch films. Now with a digital camera you can switch ISO one shot to the next.

With digital ISO is still a sensitivity rating But instead of telling the camera meter what the film requires, ISO in a digital camera tells the camera's software how to process the signal. With digital cameras ISO is really signal/noise ratio. The light striking the sensor is signal. All electronic systems have noise and so the problem becomes separating out the signal. The stronger the signal (low ISO numbers) the easier it is to engineer that task.

So with a digital camera the quality/ISO dynamic is a simple straight line. The lower the ISO the stronger the signal the better the photo. Each increase in ISO indicates a weakening signal and as a result the quality of the photo decreases as noise artifacts begin to show up. So the effort is to keep the ISO as low as possible. This is one of the primary reasons for spending the big bucks on the more expensive cameras. It costs money to separate the signal from the noise -- we expect the more expensive cameras to do a better job.

With film the quality/ISO dynamic is a curve and it's a little more complicated. A film with an ISO around 400 gives us the best tonal response. Moving in either direction up or down from there compromises the quality. At the same time a film's ability to record fine detail increases as the ISO goes down and decreases as the ISO goes up. So a medium ISO film in the 200 - 400 range will yield the best overall quality compromise.

Joe

 

[Overread]

Also whilst older the John Shaw books are some of the best to get hold of for wildlife photography. I'll also recomend that you look out for Joe McDonald's books in nature photography as well.

 

[Bram]

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